How to Increase Traffic to your Blog

If you are a new blogger or even a blogger that has been in the game for a while, you will know that the driving force behind any great blog is your traffic. Traffic increases your reach, popularity, and overall influence.

However, getting this traffic, and keeping it, can be tricky. So tricky that some bloggers just don’t know what they are doing wrong. Why isn’t my audience growing? Why aren’t my views going into double figures? This post will hopefully help you turn your traffic woes around.

Write More, More, More

The essence of a good blog is one that has a ton of fresh content. Increased traffic is due to a reader base, therefore you need to grow and keep this reader base by constantly offering them new content.

Your main goal should be putting out new content regularly, a few times a week, every day if you can. Think about it like a TV series, you get hooked when there new, regular episodes, but you wouldn’t be too interested if there was only one episode every few weeks, or months.

This should also be the first thing you look at when finding problems with the amount of traffic you are getting, you are most likely not putting enough content out there.

Promotion

How are people meant to go to your blog if they don’t even know it exists? This is where your social media channels come into play. Share what you write and post, every post should be shared. Even if you go a day or two without writing new content, share and promote your most recent post.

Don’t underestimate the power your friends and family have when it comes to this. They are your biggest supporters, especially on Facebook, they will share with all of their friends, and all of a sudden your potential readership group grows exponentially.

Titles are Important

Make sure your titles reflect an answer to a question or problem your readers may have. Your titles must draw readers in. While you are browsing Facebook, magazines, a newspaper, or even Youtube, notice which titles draw you in and how they are constructed to sound enticing.

Your Niche Knowledge

Knowing what your niche is, is another important aspect of blogging. You need to keep your content focused and relevant. There is no point in branding yourself as a travel website just to go two weeks talking about football on your blog. Keep your content focused and specific.

Knowing your niche includes knowing who your target audience is. Once again, if you are drawing readers who are interested in travel, you will alienate them if you start posting stuff that is completely unrelated to travel.

Photos

Photos and images are effective for very simple reasons. They make your post instantly more visually appealing, and it is common knowledge that readers respond to beautiful photos.

Always remember though, make sure you search websites that offer royalty-free images, you can’t go onto Google or someone else’s website and just take their images, you will be in violation of copyright laws and can be subject to a Google penalty or even a lawsuit.

Keywords are…Key

Keywords are used by Google to identify what your post is about. They are essential in Google knowing how to categorize your post. It is of utmost importance to use keywords that are popular and that can gain you traffic.

If you are unsure about keyword research and the importance of using the right keywords, a simple Google search about keyword research will show you the best tools to use and how to read the data that you are shown.

Links

Linking is important as it builds a relationship between pages on your own blog, as well as with other, more authoritative sites. If you are talking about a particular product, add a link for it to the website of the company that makes it. Readers also appreciate knowing this information.

Linking within your own blog is also great as Google likes it, it shows Google what each page is about, further increases your authority, and encourages readers to stay on your blog for longer and read more of your posts. Next time you mention in a post something you’ve written about already, add a link to the post.

Social Sharing

Depending on what blogging platform you are using, the way to do this will change, but ensure you have your social media buttons on every page so people can easily share your posts.

Retweeting

Considering the amount of information that is shared on Twitter on a second-to-second basis, you don’t want the link you shared to your new post lost in the people’s feeds, remember to always retweet old posts a few times, give them the exposure they deserve.

Guest Contributors

This method can, and often does cost money, but if you can afford it, it is a good idea to get a guest contributor to write for your blog. This is especially useful if they are well-known in your niche, as they will bring their usually huge audience to your site.

Promotion

This isn’t always necessary as correct SEO will gain you a lot of traffic after some time, but you can always pay to advertise your blog. The amount this will cost varies depending on many factors, but investigating paid promotion on a website such as Facebook can give you all the information you need on it.

Giveaways

These giveaways can be anything. A copy of a book you reviewed, a piece of gear you reviewed, or even a holiday if you are lucky enough to be given one to give away. Setting the entry rules to something like “Comment and share to enter” will encourage people to share your content.

Write guest posts yourself

Offer your writing services to other blogs that fall into your niche. You don’t have to ask them to pay you obviously, but the mere fact that you can put your name, blog, and writing out into the world even further is a big enough reward.

Newsletter

If you have a newsletter, avoid putting entire posts onto it. Put the first paragraph of a few posts into your newsletter. This will let readers know what is happening, and draw them into your site.

Easy to read

Nobody wants to be met with a wall of text when going onto a blog. Make sure you keep your paragraphs to three or four sentences long. Use bulleted and numbered lists to share information quickly, and make sure everything has a clear header or title so readers know where they are in the post or can jump to a particular section. Make it as easy as possible.

Online profile

Make sure you promote your blog on your online profiles. Ensure that no matter who is looking at your profile, and on whichever platform there is a link to your site. This brings in more traffic than you may think.

Engagement

Allow your readers to be involved in your posts. At the end of your posts ask them for their opinions or ideas related to the topic of the post. Always, ALWAYS, try to respond to as many as you can. Be friendly, be engaging, be yourself.

Enjoy it

Don’t forget to enjoy yourself while writing. If this is a topic you are passionate about, show your audience that. Never start a blog if you aren’t going to enjoy the work involved, your readers can sense that and you will start to lose them really quickly.

These tips will are definitely not a guarantee to bring traffic to your site, but if you keep working at it, and not give up, the traffic will come, the popularity will come, and when that day comes you won’t even remember doing all the work to get there.